Chapter 140
A brief memory scene appears.
The hospital stood at the edge of the town. Outside the window, the mountains were shrouded in darkness, resembling black clouds pressing upon the night sky. The town’s outline appeared like a lake, its lights mirrored as if they were stars reflecting from the heavens.
Minami Yuuki hated this serene night sky. What he longed for was a storm—a biting northerly wind, a surging cold front, a tempest sweeping across the world. He wanted the clouds in the sky to be torn into fragments of white, transformed into downy snowflakes descending to the earth! Yet, no matter how strong his will, it could not influence the grandeur of nature.
He pulled the curtains shut and turned to look at Reina.
His wife lay on the hospital bed. The medical equipment, which she had always tried to avoid, had finally encroached upon her body. But her beauty remained untouched. Illness could claim her life, but not her grace. Those tubes, some pale and some translucent, resembled the damp, shadowy vines and brambles of a forest, guarding this sleeping beauty within their confines.
During dinner, Reina had stirred groggily for a brief moment. She listened to him talk for a while before slipping back into a deep sleep. Her once serene sleeping face now bore traces of sorrow. Minami Yuuki could no longer wait—he needed Yoshida Town’s first snow to cleanse the nightmares haunting his wife’s dreams.
He kissed her cheek lightly before stepping out of the room.
Next door to the ward was the attending doctor’s office. A woman in her fifties, of average height, sat behind the desk, reviewing the examination reports in her hand.
She told Minami Yuuki, “It will be just a few days now, no more than two weeks.”